


Even Bartenders Can Learn

by WolfAndHound_Archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Romance, Time Turner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5933329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfAndHound_Archivist/pseuds/WolfAndHound_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bartender witnesses a meeting - and learns</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even Bartenders Can Learn

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Lassenia, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Wolf and Hound](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Wolf_and_Hound), which was created to make stories posted to the Sirius_Black_and_Remus_Lupin Yahoo! mailing list easier to find. However, even though I still love the fandom, I am no longer active in it and do not have the time to maintain it. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in December 2015. I posted an announcement with Open Doors, but we may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Wolf and Hound collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wolfandhound/profile).

I've been a bartender for a few years now. The money is good, the hours flexible, and my boss is fantastic. Of course, the boss is my dad, and he's also the owner of the family business, Geddy's Pub.

Geddy's isn't exactly a 'family' place, but it's not the sort of place anyone is going to visit in order to go 'cruising', either. I guess you'd have to say it's conservatively eclectic.

You see, my parents have a mixed marriage. My dad's a muggle, but my mum's a witch. We get quite a few muggle patrons, but we get quite a few of my mom's old classmates, as well. Mum was quite popular at Hogwarts, but so was I, so even though we're located inconveniently far from the Ministry of Magic and Diagon Alley (Knockturn Alley, too, thankfully), we get quite a lot of business from the wizarding world.

Before I go any further, I need to explain something. My Uncle Jeff, my father's brother is gay. We're all cool with it, I just mention it so you'll understand that a lot of his friends come here as well, and so you'll know what happened here last night is unusual not because it happened between two men, but because of the sheer **magnitude** of the emotion involved.

You think two **men** is weird? You don't know the wizarding world, then. I mean, what's a m/m couple compared to a giant/human or a hag/banshee couple? You see?

We're people who can turn into animals, transfigure rocks into turtles, grow gills to swim underground, and change our bodies with polyjuice potion into someone else's. There's even a potion for gender switching. Not much is going to surprise or shock us.

Like I said, though, this a fairly conservative place. We don't get cruisers, and we don't get the leather crowd, so when this guy first walked in I wasn't sure what to think.

He wasn't tall, just average height, and what my art student girl friend would call 'slightly built'. He was all fine, slender bones with elegant curves and angles. (Hey, I listen when she expounds!)

He had thick chestnut hair, heavily streaked with silver, that reached his ears in front, and his collar in back. It was nice and full, not shaggy, but showing signs of a recent cut.

He had a face to remember; elegantly shaped eyebrows of the same chestnut as his hair, gorgeous gold flecked hazel eyes that looked almost haunted, and long, thick eyelashes. There was a nice nose (lots of character), a sensitive, mobile mouth, and a strong jaw to balance it. Curiously enough, despite the eyes and silver hair, it was a very young face.

The man was in good shape. He moved with a dancers grace. My sister is a dancer, and I know how hard she works for that kind of movement. This man, well, it was an integral part of him, inseparable.

And for all that, he seemed totally out of place and uncomfortable.

Now, he really shouldn't have **looked** out of place. Yeah, he was wearing leather pants and a leather vest and boots, but he was also wearing a very nice, very expensive white linen shirt. No spikes, no chains, no ripped t-shirts. The only jewelry he wore was a simple gold wedding band and a tightfitting gold bracelet. He looked great.

He probably would have looked great in the spikes and chains, too. Hey, I love Amy, but I'm not blind.

No, it wasn't the clothes that marked him as out of place, it was more of an attitude thing, as if the clothes were unfamiliar and he wasn't used to crowds.

He was getting a bit of attention, too. More than one man and woman was giving him the once over, in a polite way. It only seemed to make him more uncomfortable.

He looked uncertain whether to come to the bar, or sit at a table, but finally chose a table for two. He was perfectly polite to the waitress, ordering a butterbeer, and seeming delighted when he found we carried it. He thanked her for it when she brought it to him, and paid her immediately, choosing not the run a tab.

I kept my eye on him, he fascinated me, and I noticed he kept glancing at the door, so I knew he had to be waiting for someone to join him.

The more I watched him, the more convinced I became I knew him, or had seen him somewhere. I was sure he'd never been here before. That odd combination of fragile beauty, and masculinity would make him noticed anywhere.

Then it clicked. I knew who he was. His picture had been all over the Daily Prophet a year ago, and still showed up regularly.

Remus Lupin.

Werewolf.

Hero.

Wow.

He was looking better than he had in those pictures from a year ago. In those he always looked tired and ill. Worried. Hollow eyed. That nice thick hair of his had been shaggy and dead looking. He'd still been gorgeous, but in desperate need of something, or someone.

His unease made sense, now. He was one of us, a wizard, but also a Dark Creature. This was all unfamiliar to him. He wasn't really used to being out and about with large crowds, and the wolf in him would be wary, anyway. It explained the clothes, too. Why he was wearing them, I don't know, but from what I could remember from the news stories, he was a reclusive academic for all his Auror level skills against the Dark. The man I'd read about would be much more comfortable in wizarding robes and sitting in the staff room at Hogwarts.

As for the 'someone' he needed and was watching for, the entire world knew him to be married to Sirius Black, another tabloid favorite.

Was he meeting him here, or was something else going on?

I was on the verge of going over to his table when I saw him stiffen almost imperceptibly, his gaze locking on to someone entering our common room. From behind the bar I have a great field of view. I only had to shift a bit in order to see both Lupin's table and the door at the same time.

Have you ever been in a field when lightening strikes? Sat in a theatre and listened to Michael Crowly sing "The Music of the Night" from Phantom of the Opera? Were you watching the Winter Olympics when Christopher Dean and Jane Torvil skated to Bolero?

I have, and let me tell you, those things have **nothing** on the atmosphere in here last night.

The eyes of everyone in the common room were on the the doorway. Muggle and human, everyone of us felt the change in the atmosphere in a visceral way.

A tall, dark haired man stood just inside the room's entrance. Let me tell you, he looked **nothing** like the pictures the tabloids published of him after his escape from Azkaban, or during his trial by the Ministry of Magic after Voldemort's defeat.

Oh, yes. It was Sirius Black.

He had thick, lustrous, blue-black hair that grew down to his shoulders, a strong, sharply defined face featuring frighteningly intelligent pale blue eyes, and a fiercely determined jaw. A well built man, he was muscled without being bulky; indeed, he was almost slender, with long, athletic limbs. He exuded an aura of vibrancy and confidence.

Black wore his clothes almost as an after thought, casually. His jeans were nice, nothing outstanding, but they were soft, well worn and molded to all the right places. Under a butter soft black leather jacket, he wore a white turtleneck sweater. Tucked under the collar of the jacket he wore a heavy white silk scarf. He resembled nothing so much as a World War II flyboy; yet he was utterly and completely himself.

He **exuded** sex appeal.

Now, as sure as I'm sitting here, I'd have sworn Black was going to walk over to Lupin's table and sweep him off his feet. We're talking big, strong, vibrant, **dominant** in control wizard, here. I mean, all this time Lupin has been sitting at that table like a fish out of water, uncomfortable as all get out, obviously waiting for Black to show up and 'rescue' him.

Right?

Wrong.

I'm watching all this, thinking those thoughts, when the whole dynamic shifts. Black doesn't really change, he just, he... I don't really have a word for for it. It's like this really strong, really dominant guy ...arggh. I don't know. You had to be there.

Whatever caused the change, its origin was Remus Lupin.

I'd been concentrating, just like everyone else in the room, on Black. Black, of course, had been concentrating on Lupin. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Lupin.

Did I say this guy was fragile? Did I describe him as a reclusive academic? Did I say his clothes seemed to make him uncomfortable?

Whoa! Was I ever mistaken!

This was a wild creature, fully alert and concentrating on stalking its prey - and Black was its' prey.

Judging by Black's attitude, he was **willing** prey.

I don't know what brought them to our pub, last night. I don't know why they came separately instead of together. All I know is this - if this was a game, they'd obviously played it before, and they both intended to end up winners.

By now everyone in the room had registered Lupin. He'd risen from his chair and begun to ... walk? toward Black. I don't have a word that truly describes Lupin's walk. Earlier he'd had a dancer's grace. This was different. It was feral and smooth and gliding.

The clothes in which he'd been so uncomfortable now fit him perfectly.

He was the very image of the predator, of the wolf he was.

You could have cut the silence in that room with a knife - I swear, no one was even breathing. The sexual tension between those two men, those two long **married** men, was so high, so tangible, it was nearly a living thing.

I don't know what we were expecting, or hoping to see, when Lupin finally reached Black, but I'm sure it isn't what actually happened. There was no kiss, no embrace. They simply looked into each other's eyes, as they had been all along. Lupin reached one hand up to Black's face, ran his fingers softly across a cheek, lingered for a moment on the lips, then lowered his hand. He dropped his gaze from Black's face, slipped around him, and disappeared through the doorway. A heartbeat later, Black followed him and the doorway was empty.

I called my dad down to tend the bar. I really, really needed to see Amy. I'd been hemming and hawing about commitment, about getting married. I'd been afraid we were too young, that we wouldn't stay together when it got rough, no matter how much we loved each other.

Not any more.

We can never be sure of the future, we don't know what is going to happen to us, what we are going to have to face.

I know now that it's true -"That which does not kill us, makes us stronger." I've seen the proof.

The entire wizarding world knows Black's and Lupin's history. How they fell in love in school, were hand fasted after graduation, were separated not long after. It's a history full of betrayal, pain, suffering and rejection, but it's also a story of an all consuming love, a love stronger than ever after nearly 20 years.

I saw the proof of that last night.

I'd been afraid I couldn't be strong enough for the two of us, when the rough times came. I'd forgotten that there **were** two of us in the relationship, that Amy and I are equals, and that I can rely upon her, and her love for me, when I am weak.

I went to Amy last night, and we made love; wild, passionate love. I don't know what she thought when I walked through the door of her apartment, but she opened her arms, her body, and her bed to me without a word. Later we talked; about life, relationships and marriage. We set a wedding date, then we made love again, the sweetest and most fulfilling love we've made.

I imagine most of the people in the pub last night went home and did the same.

We watched something extraordinary last night, something rare and beautiful that yet we could all reach for, for ourselves.

I am thankful, from the bottom of my heart, that I bore witness to it.

~~~~~~~ The End


End file.
